Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry

First published by City Lights in 1962 and long out of print, Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry is the only comprehensive selection of his poetry to be published in the U.S., and it remains the perfect introduction to his extensive poetic canon.

Edited by Lowry’s good friend, renowned Canadian poet Earle Birney, with the assistance of his widow, Margerie Lowry, the selection includes extraordinary poems written during Lowry’s stay in Mexico, many of which are closely related to his landmark novel.

“These poems would be worth keeping in print, if for no other reason, for their illuminations of Under the Volcano: ‘See mind’s petal / torn from a good tree, but where shall it settle / But in the last darkness and at the end?’ Sometimes, as the images of “For Under the Volcano,” they become ‘palm-of-the-hand’ versions of that masterpiece. Lowry is a poet of struggle—with life, and with the creative process. Here are his struggle’s fruits: guilt, alcoholism, hopeless, self-deriding quest for salvation, which seems to be love, and, above all, self-destruction—but always accomplished with self-knowledge, enriched (in order to further torment itself) with compassion for all the beings that the poet, and us with him, are failing. His words are always sad and often beautiful.” –– William T. Vollmann

Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) was a British novelist and poet whose masterpiece Under the Volcano is widely hailed as one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Born near Liverpool, England, Lowry grew up in a prominent, wealthy family and chafed under the expectations placed upon him by parents and boarding school. He wrote passionately on the themes of exile and despair, and his own wanderlust and erratic lifestyle made him an icon to later generations of writers.

Title Selected Poems of Malcolm Lowry
Subtitle Pocket Poets Series Number 17
Author Malcolm Lowry
Preface by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Introduction by Earle A. Birney
Edited by Earle A. Birney
Collection City Lights Pocket Poets
Publisher City Lights Publishers
Paperback – $13.95
118 pages
ISBN-10 0872867293
ISBN-13 9780872867291
Publication in March 2017

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